Sandbox BASS

I have run sandbox-ish campaigns for as long as I can recall, and most times the rules I've run them with have made it harder, not easier, to run a campaign of that sort. Playing with various incarnations of D&D, there would be the invariable scaling from 1st level wimp to 10th level hero, to a situation of "high-level over-powered munchkin that is impossible to challenge seriously". Well, impossible to challenge without putting in far more time as a DM than I found fun. I never wanted to spend hours compiling spells, abilities, treasures to *finally* challenge the players. I wanted to spend that time on fun characters, plots, twists and turns ... bits and pieces of lore and adventure that I could drop into the game.

About 2-3 years ago I ran across the various concepts of old-school gaming & sandbox games on the internet and soon realized this was pretty much what I had been looking for. Fiddling around further, I realized I wanted a game with less of a power-curve and more bloody damned adventuring. I wanted the players to start with "heroes" like Conan, characters with back-story & ability - but not with super powers. That's the direction we started developing BASS - which is basically still little more than a simplified house-rule-set & a character generation system for creating bad-ass, unusual characters.

The next few steps I want to take are the development of tables & elements for populating the sandbox: regions, locations, items, artifacts, opponents. Tools that will allow me, as the DM, to throw more at the players, more easily and with less planning. Because that, I think, is a rule that should be set in stone:

Planning and preparing for a game should not take longer than actually running the game!

It might be fun, but, honestly, much of it will never be seen. So why do it? That's why I want elements that can recycle from adventure to adventure, campaign to campaign ... and if one of them sparks a hook that starts a player of on a cycle of adventures, then so be it. If not: it's just loot for sale!

More to follow ...

"Hello world," post.

After years and years of role-playing, several failed starts online, various other nonsense and seven squid sisters, Pjotrus and me (Lukc) have decided to share our little contribution to the messy world of role-playing games. We started with dungeons and dragons, 2nd edition, way back in 1996 or so and over time the games and the types of games we've played have changed. This blog is an attempt to archive where we've arrived, our journey hence and the things we'll discover later on. Suffice to say, our game has become pretty old-school, often quite silly and definitely a bit more bloody than the original version ... but hopefully, also a bit more funny.

Anyway, here are the approximate goals regarding the content of the blog: keeping up to date with the "BASS" house-rule set (this might even help players at times), maps (we make a few of those), monsters, items, silliness & finally general thoughts on role-playing.

Let's hope this li'l blog doesn't die too soon!